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Friday, June 29, 2012

Getting away with it

As I'm struggling through the final scenes of the 'Brake Fluid' first draft, a thought has occurred to me.

Do you guys (as readers) want the two main characters to get away with it?

The 'it' of course being, the stealthy disposal of Jackson's body.

And I suppose I'm putting this out to any followers who have read chunks of the story, or those who have read the *blurb* on my 'what I'm writing' page.

The line that put this thought into my brain is this:

So what happens when everyone’s at fault, but no one’s at fault?

The ending for this story was always very clear in my mind (which is unusual), but I think that's 'cause I recognized Jackson's death for what it is. A catalyst. But at the same time, it's the end result of another catalyst: the original bet at the party six months earlier.

Sure, half the plot is the slow reveal of what actually happened on those two past nights, but the other half of the story is the journey to dispose of the body.

It's essentially an exercise in dealing with consequences and guilt, not just for Triss & the MC, but everyone involved, including Jackson.

Hence that particular line about 'fault'.

I think this is a particularly tricky question when we're talking about YA.

'Cause when I think back to what I was like at that age... I was involved in a hell-of-a-lot of stupid stuff. Some I got caught for, and some I still feel guilty about even now. Consequences and guilt were things I thought about a lot at that age, not only in weighing choices, but in figuring the angles on how to get out of potential trouble depending on which path I took.

You can rationalize a lot with only a split second to think.

Which is why when I was writing this story, I wanted to muddy up the reader's desires... to make it difficult to say for sure whether Triss & the MC should get caught, or get away with it.

Can you think of any books where you've equally wanted the main character to 'get away with it', yet also want them to get caught and punished?

How much emphasis (or thought) do you put into the consequences/guilt of a character's choices?